After this years maintenance, refresh of the rear parking shoes/discs, welding on the front chassis rails and replacing the soft top latch hoses, it was time for a road trip.

Planned at the last minute when out for a beer with a friend on Thursday night, we set off on Friday morning with this route in mind.



First stop was at Loch Morlich for some lunch, the Cairngorm ski area in the background. This has been a terrible year for snow, they are often open well into May but not this year.



We did the trip with some friends in their (tiny) 2005 MR2.



Next It was on to Dornoch for an overnight stay at this great little hotel.



Saturday Morning we headed for Dunrobin Castle, originally owned by the evil/controversial Duke of Sutherland.



.....and from the other side.



Some background from Trip Advisor.

No wonder the Sutherlands were able to build such an immense and impressive castle given that they had cleared a vast area of northern Scotland of its inhabitants in the Highland Clearances in order to make vast wealth from farming sheep on the empty land. This detail is never mentioned in the history of the castle as you go round on the tour. Rather it is presented as a romantic history of a benevolent Scottish family.

After that we headed up to Scotland's most northerly town/village, John o' Groats, its pretty desolate there but has to be done sometime in everyone's (Scots) lifetime, only 3230 miles to New York, where a lot of Scots ended up after the "Clearances".





We then headed back down to Inverness on totally deserted roads and much fun was had.

Today we headed down to the Queens summer house at Balmoral, she doesn't arrive till August so we plebs get to have a look around.





The Queens writing desk.



It was then a blast back through the Glenshee mountains to home in time for a barbie in the late afternoon sun.

What great weekend, we actually had a record temp set for Easter day in Scotland today of a very pleasant 23 degC.

 

What a lovely trip! Having owned that generation of MR2 myself, I'd bet that it's slightly roomier inside given the lack of transmission tunnel and more upright windscreen!

 

Great to see you're getting some driving time in

Thanks for sharing

 

Well done and some gorgeous photos....

 

Wonderful photos !!!! For years I've wanted to get a little cottage in Cornwall and stay for a couple of months and take road trips with the cottage as my base.. I fell in love with the area thanks to my Poldark addiction.

To those who don't know the show, it was a BBC TV show that was set just after the USA had won the revolutionary war. A wonderful show that reatured the wild coast of Cornwall as its backdrop.

Back to driving , my Easter trip was only 100 miles, but on Thursday the XKR will get to stretch its legs for about 1,100 miles on a 3 day trip to New Mexico and back.

Z

 

Great to see pics where our X100 has been really GT driven.... as designed for.

Lovely post!

 

Great pix. Good to see an XK being used as it was intended to be. Not a garage Queen. Keep up the good usage, and more for the rest of the forum members, myself included!! The cars were designed to be driven, if we can just get them running properly........

 

nice to see the Jag out and about! Awesome pics of the journey.